reddit vs discord

[astyle]

As long you don't say that something can't be ported to FreeBSD because it have certain blocks, right?
(Which is natural something not being easily ported from one OS to another even with the source available because the OS properties, but some people just don't want to understand that.)

People who don't stay are mostly the kind that get disappointed that FreeBSD doesn't really support backlight control on multimedia keyboards or the latest GPUs like RX 7900 XTX... or wifi. There's lots of stuff that I wish worked better on FreeBSD - like wifi. But there's also stuff that I like about FreeBSD, like ZFS and usable documentation. With that kind of knowledge, both of good and the bad, the pitfalls and perks, I made my decision to keep using FreeBSD. I think one kind of needs to know what they're getting into...

 

[menelkir]

People who don't stay are mostly the kind that get disappointed that FreeBSD doesn't really support backlight control on multimedia keyboards or the latest GPUs like RX 7900 XTX... or wifi. There's lots of stuff that I wish worked better on FreeBSD - like wifi. But there's also stuff that I like about FreeBSD, like ZFS and usable documentation. With that kind of knowledge, both of good and the bad, the pitfalls and perks, I made my decision to keep using FreeBSD. I think one kind of needs to know what they're getting into...

Not even that, what hits my knee is about false propaganda, because feels like "it's fine as long it's about FreeBSD". It does have his pitfalls, knowing the weakness of something you're about to use is better for your workflow (everything have pros and cons, there's no perfect system), closing the eye to an issue or making jokes about it makes one a childish zealot (that's one of the reasons I don't like terms like linux-isms, bash-isms, whatever-isms, etc, it's widely used by zealots).
It's even worse if one takes a position like "it will work as long someone that isn't me step up and do it".

 

[Cath O'Deray]

People who don't stay are mostly the kind that get disappointed that FreeBSD doesn't really support backlight control on multimedia keyboards or the latest GPUs like RX 7900 XTX... or wifi.

Discord in particular?

For the more than ten communities, how does a remaining member (or subscriber) count whether any one person – or group of people – has truly gone away for a significant period?

In alphabetical order:

1. Discord
2. Facebook
3. fediverse
4. FreeBSD Forums
5. IRC
6. LinkedIn
7. Matrix
8. Reddit
9. X
10. YouTube
11. …

 

[astyle]

Not even that, what hits my knee is about false propaganda, because feels like "it's fine as long it's about FreeBSD".

I saw the FreeBSD Discord server as exactly the place where "it's fine as long it's about FreeBSD". A place to just easily drop in at, see what FreeBSD is about, and decide if FreeBSD is for you or not. No, no rule to prevent someone from going completely off-topic or not taking kindly to being called out for not knowing what Open Source is about. As an example of what would be too far off-topic: If one is trying to pull a bitcoin scam, then yeah, that's too far off-topic for the server. But talking about the technical hurdles of pulling off just the mining process on FreeBSD specifically - not a problem.

making jokes about it makes one a childish zealot (that's one of the reasons I don't like terms like linux-isms, bash-isms, whatever-isms, etc, it's widely used by zealots).

Sometimes, you gotta be in tune with the conversation to realize that shockingly rude jokes are aimed at a rather narrow audience who can take it because of the situation. But yeah, childish zealots are out there, too.

It's even worse if one takes a position like "it will work as long someone that isn't me step up and do it".

I've been guilty of that myself - like making noise about wifi (or Wayland) being a house of cards. I'd like to explain myself here, though. I do have a lot on my plate (Yeah, so does everyone else). FreeBSD does have a development process that needs to be learned and followed correctly before I can submit a patch that fixes the issue. That is a time-consuming process that I'd need to make time for. I'd frankly do it, but there's "real life" keeping me too busy for that. Basically, if there's enough noise on the Internet, somebody will eventually step up and do it. Given enough time, it's not out of question for me to do it, either. That's how Open Source works, buddy.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

blackhole sorry, I overreacted in this topic because the negativity in other topics was very memorable. Things such as <https://forums.freebsd.org/posts/641234> (where I subsequently withheld a link) and <https://forums.freebsd.org/posts/633617> (where I sarcastically compared your rudeness about a BSD community website with the site's plea for civility).

I simply do not like unnecessary negativity, especially when it's directed towards fellow communities.

As I wrote, years ago, ugliness breeds ugliness.

 

[wolfquin]

Not even that, what hits my knee is about false propaganda, because feels like "it's fine as long it's about FreeBSD". It does have his pitfalls, knowing the weakness of something you're about to use is better for your workflow (everything have pros and cons, there's no perfect system), closing the eye to an issue or making jokes about it makes one a childish zealot (that's one of the reasons I don't like terms like linux-isms, bash-isms, whatever-isms, etc, it's widely used by zealots).
It's even worse if one takes a position like "it will work as long someone that isn't me step up and do it".

we do have issues in the Discord regarding rude behavior, now that I am a contributor and not a helper. I can say we had very strict rules on what we can ban, we wanted the place to be self regulating unless someone is notified.

a lot of people saw that as an opportunity to police around, and to boss people what is allowed to talk about and whatnot, but the truth is we never had a hard rule against discussing politics or any other topics as far as formal goes, I remember I had told people to stop talking about 7th october
to avoid extreme situations, however we also accepted apologies, in fact no one is perma banned from what I know, only put to pause until they appeal.

I can however say also that people as a group is more forgiving than the forums, and that each helper only worked on specific things as far as our objectives go, but we never were tasked to moderate purely, so more time in moderation was less time to do other things.


the argument against Discord being closed source is fair, but what we hoped for is that we can fresh up the contributors with more people in the long term, by finding a younger audience who are still studying. people often stick to mainstream platforms instead of open source alternatives sadly.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

I have been thinking about this for months, and I have had a very good night's sleep, so what follows is not a tired, angry, knee-jerk set of comments.

Thoughts crystallised during a discussion with Dan Langille. I used Markdown to … … draft a couple of links. Such freedom – how lovely.

---

Crystallised:

1. FreeBSD, famed for its networking capabilities
2. FreeBSD, reportedly most reliable for hosting thirteen years ago – I assume that most such hosts served some web content
3. FreeBSD, still the platform of choice for many of the busiest websites – according to the front page of the Project
4. FreeBSD Forums, a community of choice for people who love to complain about links to websites on the net.

---

Cue: someone here with yet another set of aching reminders of why the same degree of freedom is unacceptable.

A hint, if you're not the boss of me:

4​

– and ask yourself, how many other things do you love to complain about?

Complain, and then enjoy the upvotes of the complainer clique.​

---

Back to the opening post, thanks again, Alain, for inspiring such revealing discussions.

Essentially:

… reddit & discord attract another kind of public.

Both communities above are much more easygoing than The FreeBSD Forums.

I don't like that a few sour-mouths have effectively spat a wedge between FreeBSD communities, but what's done is done, and now, deal with it.

Respectfully, good morning.

 

[msplsh]

Both communities above are much more easygoing than The FreeBSD Forums.

I tried to point out that this is because Discord's format makes it difficult to say "search" so you're not going to stick around if people not searching annoys you.

I went over to Reddit and was (un?) surprised to see someone named u/grahamperrin get downvoted for trying to ask people to be nice to OSNews. That was an amusing counterpoint to this assertion.

For the forums, you pretty much have to be here for a reason.

I don't like that a few sour-mouths have effectively spat a wedge between FreeBSD communities, but what's done is done, and now, deal with it.

Honestly, I don't believe this, since when I went over to Reddit, I discovered an entire Reddit post linking to this topic by u/grahamperrin. I guess if you didn't know that there used to be a user here named grahamperrin, it would be hard for a casual observer to make this connection and realize that post is kind of a stirring one.

 

[astyle]

Honestly, I don't believe this, since when I went over to Reddit, I discovered an entire Reddit post linking to this topic by u/grahamperrin. I guess if you didn't know that there used to be a user here named grahamperrin, it would be hard for a casual observer to make this connection and realize that post is kind of a stirring one.

It's the same guy... Just click on his profile in the Forums. It took me about a couple hours to realize. It's not that hard to change the username or the visible handle, but now I realize just how effective that was.

I don't like that a few sour-mouths have effectively spat a wedge between FreeBSD communities, but what's done is done, and now, deal with it.

Microsoft, Google, and Apple actually have a very similar kind of split, depending on the channel of communication. Xbox forums have a distinctly different crowd than the ones that gather at Tenforums and Sevenforums. Apple crowd do have a distinct distaste for anything non-Apple - until you come to jailbreaker forums. I've seen enough of such splits to really stop caring. It's like walking into a bar - every watering hole has alcohol, snacks and TVs, but distinctly different crowds. In some bars, you can run a tab, some places have a dance floor, some places have a good selection of beer, some places have a friendlier crowd of patrons than others...

 

[Cath O'Deray]

I changed my nickname and profile here, and in Discord, for fun

grahamperrin stuff still works, try this link from 2022:

When I change my username, will past references to grahamperrin (i.e. @grahamperrin) change automatically?

Also still working, grahamperrin@ from my time as a Project member (doc tree committer).

---

… a "walled garden", which you see as the superior medium? …

No, that's not how I see things.

The numerous walled gardens in The FreeBSD Forums are vastly inferior (compared to Reddit). Not only walled, profile posts in the Forums:

• have the annoyingly tight character limit (like, it's last century) the practical effect of which can be annoyingly difficult to predict
• have no visible method for linking to commentary
• can have a link to a comment, for example <https://forums.freebsd.org/profile-posts/comments/10785/>, however the forum is prone to hiding users' content and then when you click to reveal, XenForo fails to highlight the linked comment, which is worse than Discord.

… even more hoops to jump through. … still need to hunt … screen full of text, and the referenced post is somewhere in the middle of that? At least Reddit … links actually link me directly to the referenced post, I don't have to scan the result to find the exact post being referenced. … links to specific posts are awful, not your fault. … needs to improve this.

Similarly, the awful problems with XenForo for the walled garden profile posts in The FreeBSD Forums are not my fault

---

… kind of a stirring

No.

Reddit vs Discord — The FreeBSD Forums was originally pinned, the pin was removed more than two months ago:

If I had wanted to cause trouble, I could have re-pinned the post (at the top of the FreeBSD subreddit) and then pinned my thoughts (at the top of the post).

Instead, I used my profile, which is:

1. separate from all subreddits
2. not a walled garden.

---

Profile posts in Reddit are not walled, they're normally visible to the public. You can vary from that, but public is the norm.

Also: Reddit profile posts don't suffer from an archaic character limit; and, as SirDice pointed out, Reddit links are effective.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

Search in Discord​

… Discord's format makes it difficult to say "search" …

This time, please, can you be specific?

Back to page one here:

(I quoted "search results in Discord are great" because the original text was in a walled garden at The FreeBSD Forums.)

 

[astyle]

can have a link to a comment, for example <https://forums.freebsd.org/profile-posts/comments/10785/>, however the forum is prone to hiding users' content and then when you click to reveal, XenForo fails to highlight the linked comment, which is worse than Discord.

Yeah, you have to be logged in to see comments on user profiles. You also have to be logged in to see comments on Discord... so?

have the annoyingly tight character limit (like, it's last century) the practical effect of which can be annoyingly difficult to predict

I'm not annoyed at that at all. Character limits do force one to think about a good sentence to put there. Makes it easier to remember the old Internet maxim, which is: "Think before you post". Just reading and re-reading the sentence, questioning your own choice of words, the meaning of what you wanna say - I'd say that's a benefit that gets lost when there's virtually no character limit. But that's not to say that the idea is perfect - I ran up against a character limit in hilarious ways in the 90s , but that's a story for a different thread.

 

[msplsh]

This time, please, can you be specific?

• You can't index Discord stuff in an external search engine
• If somebody searched for you, you can't see stuff linked on Discord if you don't have an account
• Your searches are going to come up with a bunch of chaff of people asking the same question because in Discord, everything is current or it's adrift in the sea of contextless search. Hope you even clicked into the discussion to get the context, otherwise how else would you scroll three screens up in the search results window to see if the answer applies to you.
• Oh, you wanted to do something else in Discord and then come back to your search where you left it? LOL NO
• Searching doesn't get you an post with an answer, it gets you a discussion you have to contextualize and digest. You can argue that forum posts are discussions, but Discord is not oriented around forum-length posts, so there's more interleaving.

If you can't do the above stuff, then I don't think it really matters if Discord search is "better" (I assume this means "more relevant")

Personally, I like Discord. I think it's terrible for information permanence, however.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

There's too much discussion here in defense of Cath O'Deray reason for being here or why everywhere else is better than here.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

Please, don't exaggerate.

Please, don't exaggerate.

… why everywhere else is better than here.

Please, don't exaggerate.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… everything is current or it's adrift in the sea of contextless search. …

Please, don't exaggerate.

Threads give additional context. So, for example:

• two of the found threads
• each of the threads has a context (a channel).

---

Looking ahead, there's talk of using a forum feature in FreeBSD Discord. Maybe related: a 2022 blog post (screenshot attached). Keyword:

• organised.

I see this feature in at least two instances elsewhere, one of which I can't name here.

A shot of an interface to tagging:

Relevance to Alain's opening post (reddit vs discord):

• Reddit has a limit of one flair per post
  
• Discord allows multiple tags

For the unnamed instance, the second shot below shows part of how channels are arranged (without picturing any of the content that's organised within the community-forum area).

HTH

 

[msplsh]

• Hope you even clicked into the discussion to get the context, otherwise how else would you scroll three screens up in the search results window to see if the answer applies to you.

Please, don't exaggerate.

Threads give additional context. So, for example:

If you had only included the next sentence of context it would seem like less of an exaggeration. Wow, it's like you snipping just one sentence out in a quote simulated how it would be if I were typing in Discord: The next sentence would have been a new message and cut out of the search context...

For your pkgbase example, what the heck are you even talking about in the search result. Ambiguity is bad! Pkgbase will make Ambiguity worse? What is the "Ambiguity" and what does it have to do with the search term? Pretty much useless unless you click through.

How do threads even help? In your example, the title wasn't useful contextual information. Honestly, I hate them on Discord. They're only useful to keep stuff from scrolling off the channel for a short time, but anything longer gets real annoying, clicking into them and throwing what's effectively a modal screen that's difficult to return to, just like the search screen. Not discoverable. Any random garbage can become a thread and make the thread listing useless quickly.

Oh great, recreate forums inside the walled garden of Discord. I won't bother discussing the shifting probability of the future against reality, but... why post a giant PNG ad for this feature? What important or relevant information does this full screen photo add?

 

[blackhole]

blackhole sorry, I overreacted in this topic because the negativity in other topics was very memorable. Things such as <https://forums.freebsd.org/posts/641234> (where I subsequently withheld a link) and <https://forums.freebsd.org/posts/633617> (where I sarcastically compared your rudeness about a BSD community website with the site's plea for civility).

You also quoted me out of context. The site's "plea for civillity" has no bearing at all on the site's format or whether people find it usable.

Some will like that format, some will not. It's not "negativity" to dislike something and voice an opinion - as you have done in this thread.

Some will like the command line, others will prefer a GUI. It's a preference, not negativity. Calling it negativity is that slippery slope of labelling and dismissing things we don't like.

Others have summed up the "walled garden" and other issues. I can search for a problem using a search engine and get results from this forum in an easily readable thread, without logging in or needing an account.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

Pkgbase will make Ambiguity worse?

No, it was a word, a search term.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

why post a giant PNG ad

It was a screenshot of a blog post, not an advertisement. I think I used the phrase blog post, to avoid confusion.

Please reload. I think I removed the insertion (of the attachment) before you complained about the size of the insertion. You'll see the thumbnail of the attachment, alone.

Also, a reload will show what I added.

4. FreeBSD Forums, a community of choice for people who love to complain about links to websites on the net.

So, instead of a link to a blog post in its entirety, you have a screenshot of a relevant part of a blog post. There's enough text in the shot, if its thumbnail is clicked, for most people to read the title of the post and then use a search engine to find it. Here's what should have been the alt text for the image:

Forum Channels: A Space for Organized Conversations​

Accessibility​

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… slippery slope of labelling and dismissing things we don't like.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned.

Where your last word on the article was "worthless", that label seemed (to me) unmistakably dismissive of something that you did not like.

A slip of the fingers, perhaps.

 

[astyle]

Some will like the command line, others will prefer a GUI. It's a preference, not negativity. Calling it negativity is that slippery slope of labelling and dismissing things we don't like.

Others have summed up the "walled garden" and other issues. I can search for a problem using a search engine and get results from this forum in an easily readable thread, without logging in or needing an account.

I'm sorry, but it is negativity when we refer to something as 'worthless'. One user's trash is another's treasure. If someone does not know how to use the command line of UNIX, then yeah, they will say that it is 'worthless' - much to the chagrin of those who do actually know how to use the command line.

Yeah, these Forums do have posts that can be searched by Google without requiring an account. Not all places are like that. Just imagine the ACM online library. It actually offers some pretty incredible and interesting content that is actually not available to the rest of the Internet. Yes, it's behind a paywall. Yes, it caters to an audience who can actually understand, appreciate, and put to good use the content of that online library. I'd know, I've seen some of it when I was in college. A random link to something from the ACM online library is not gonna work if you don't have an account there - but no friggin' way it's worthless.

 

[msplsh]

No, it was a word, a search term

Right, and the "results" were not helpful. In order to parse the result, you're going to need to know what the "ambiguity" is about. What does it have to do with pkgbase? Because of the structure of Discord, you have to click through and parse the entire conversation (probably filtering out additional noise that might be going on in the channel) vs reading a post that somebody had to put some work into.

It was a screenshot of a blog post,

Why would you do that? Just link it?

4. FreeBSD Forums, a community of choice for people who love to complain about links to websites on the net.

Oh right, either malicious or ignorant compliance with complaints.

The reason people were complaining about your links is that they didn't serve any purpose in the discussion. The image serves even less purpose, because if people wanted to know how the implementation of forums work, they can't get to it from a link here. You can achieve the same results by simply mentioning that the feature exists.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

Why would you do that?

I need not repeat the explanation above.

You can tell me how and when to write, but you're not the boss of me.

 

[msplsh]

Of course not, but your misunderstanding of what's expected behavior here is the source of your friction.

You explained what you posted, but you didn't explain why it was important to post it at all.